Abstract #0559

A portable brain MRI scanner based on a 72 mT, 35 kg "Halbach-bulb" magnet and external gradient coil

Clarissa Zimmerman Cooley^1,2, Jason Stockmann^1,2, and Lawrence L Wald^1,2,3

¹Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States, ²Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ³Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States

There is clear motivation for increasing the accessibility of MRI, particularly for brain imaging. To address this, we present a portable tight-fitting MRI scanner with a geometry that is optimized for head. We use a 35kg “Halbach-bulb” permanent magnet design that combines a Halbach sphere and Halbach cylinder. The gradient coils are designed on the outer surface of the magnet, enabling a closer-fit B0 magnet. The inhomogeneous B0 magnet results image distortion, which we correct using a generalized reconstruction algorithm that employs measured field maps. We present the full scanner system and in vivo 3D images with resolution 1.5mmx2.7mmx7mm.

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